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Federated Commonwealths of America
The Federated Commonwealths of America was a republic born from the English colonies established in North America throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries. As the English monarchy grew more absolutist, a steady flow of immigrants settled in the colonies, despite the threat posed by sims. Philadelphia was the national capital. As English rule grew more tyrannical, the colonies united and broke away from the mother country, becoming independent in 1738.See Inconsistencies in Turtledove's Work#Inconsistencies in A Different Flesh. The leaders of this new country, known as the Conscript Fathers, promulgated the Articles of Independence, the document which established the independence of the FCA and outlined the structure of the new government, using the Roman Republic as a template. The legislature was bi-cameral. The lower house was the Popular Assembly, whose members were directly elected. The upper house was the Senate. Its members were former censors and commonwealth governors, who entered the house for life upon completion of their terms. The executive branch was made of up two censors, the highest political office in the Federated Commonwealths. Most scholars assumed that the Conscript Fathers had created two censors with the understanding that the executive would be kept further in check, particularly if the censors were opposed politically. Each censor could veto the other. The censors were elected by popular vote for one five-year term. From the early colonial period until the early 19th century, the FCA relied on a a two-tier chattel system of slavery. Black Humans were imported from Africa to act as both domestic servants and laborers. The native sim population was tamed and used in a similar manner, until owners realized that the sims were poor domestic servants. Thus, until the early 19th century, blacks were traditionally domestic servants, while the sims were laborers. However, the very existence of sims undermined the institution of slavery, as it became clear in time that the central axiom of slavery, the inferiority of blacks, was a falsehood. In the case of Jeremiah, a slave who had fled from the Gillen Plantation in Virginia Commonwealth in 1805, attorney Alfred Douglas demonstrated that his client was capable of speech and literacy, unlike a sim. The court ruled in favor of Jeremiah, and slavery itself withered away within the next few decades. The issue of the sims remained ongoing, however. The sims justice movement began not longer after the Jeremiah case. This movement (begun by trapper Henry Quick in the late 1810s) argued that while sims were not human, they were still far more than mere beasts of burden. The fight over the nature of sims and their place in society continued throughout the 19th century. As industrialization gradually replaced sim-labor, society found a new use for sims in scientific research. Sims were used in everything from testing new technology (a sim named Abel was the first creature to orbit the Earth) to disease research. By the end of the 20th century, sims were being used successfully in the hunt for the cure for AIDS, despite the discomfort of many in the sims justice movement. By 1988, the FCA was a large, populous nation dominating the North American continent, and boasted a high standard of living and level of technology. Literary comment The full geography of the FCA is never given. The "Censor of the FCA" seems to be based on the Consul of the Roman Republic. Censor is also a Roman office, but one that never had any executive power. See Also *The United States of America, the OTL analog. ::President of the United States, the head of state and government of the United States. ::United States Declaration of Independence, the apparent OTL analog of the Articles of Independence of the FCA. *The United States of Atlantis and its eponymous timeline, a fictional continent and country that similarly melds elements and history of the United States of America and the Roman Republic. ::Consul of the United States of Atlantis, in the same series, an office similar to the Censor of the FCA. ::Atlantean Proclamation of Liberty, the analog of the Articles/Declaration of Independence in Atlantis. *North American Union, the analog in ''The Two Georges''. ::Governor-General of the North American Union, the head of government of the NAU. References Federated Commonwealths of America Federated Commonwealths of America Category:Countries in North America (Fictional Work)